Steventon

Steventon today

Steventon is a large village of about 2,200 people in the flat country of the Vale, with the Ginge Brook and its side streams running round and through it. From the church, the village street curves north-east to a large green, and all along it runs the Causeway, a raised, paved footpath nearly a mile long, lined with trees and with timber-framed houses on either side. The village is a conservation area.

At the time of writing Steventon has three pubs (the North Star, the Fox and the Cherry Tree), a Co-op store, a primary school and a village hall. The B4017, the old Oxford to Southampton road, runs through the village, with the A34 just to the east. The Great Western main line crosses the south of the parish, but the station closed in 1964.

History

Name and early finds

The name, Stivetune in 1086, is usually explained as the farm or settlement of a man called Stif or Stifa. A Gaulish gold-alloy coin was found at Berridge’s Farm in 1855.

Domesday and the priory

Before the Conquest Steventon belonged to Earl Harold. In 1086 it was royal land, with 68 households, three mills and a church. Henry I gave the manor to the abbey of Bec in Normandy, through its daughter house at Rouen, and a small cell known as Steventon Priory ran the estate with one or two monks. There was never a full priory church; the house was a working grange. In the 1280s the tenants went to law against the monks over their services and largely won. As a French-owned house the priory was leased out in the 14th century, and after passing to the soldier Sir Hugh Calveley the manor was given by Richard II to Westminster Abbey in 1399. The Dean and Chapter of Westminster held it until 1869. The priory buildings survive as Priory Cottages, whose oldest parts date from the 14th century; Ferguson’s Gang gave them to the National Trust in 1939.

The Causeway

The raised causeway was already old in 1419, when the manor’s tenants were said to be bound by custom to repair it. Local tradition credits the monks with building it, to keep the path dry when the brook flooded. Several sections are listed Grade II*, as are several of the houses beside it, which date from the 14th to the 17th centuries.

The church

St Michael and All Angels has an arch and pier of about 1220, but was largely rebuilt in the 14th century, when the south tower was added. The nave and chancel roofs have carved bosses, including a mermaid and a king’s head.

Canal, railway and enclosure

The Wilts and Berks Canal passed through the parish. The Great Western Railway opened Steventon station on 1 June 1840, and until the Oxford branch opened from Didcot in 1844 it served as the station for Oxford, with coaches carrying passengers on by road. Because Steventon lay about halfway between London and Bristol, the railway’s directors held board meetings here for a time in the early 1840s, in a building altered to Brunel’s designs; Brunel also designed the road bridge over the line. Steventon’s open fields were not enclosed until 1885, the last in Berkshire. The parish moved to Oxfordshire in 1974.

Recent years

In 2003 the landlord of the North Star partly demolished his own listed pub with a digger; it was restored and reopened later that year. At the time of writing, Thames Water’s proposed reservoir between Steventon, East Hanney and Drayton, now called the White Horse Reservoir (earlier known as SESRO or the Abingdon reservoir), was at the pre-application stage. Thames Water consulted on it from October 2025 to January 2026 and expected to apply to the Planning Inspectorate for development consent in November 2026.

Things to see

• The Causeway, the raised medieval footpath through the village (sections Grade II*).
• Priory Cottages (National Trust, Grade II*), with its great hall; visits by written appointment with the tenant.
• St Michael and All Angels church (Grade I).
• The North Star, a timber-framed pub that still serves beer from the cask without a bar counter (Grade II).
• Brunel’s road bridge over the railway and the former station buildings (Grade II), seen from the road.
• The village green and the timber-framed houses along the Causeway, including 39 and 83-85 (Grade II*).